AP Program Assumes Larger Role

Expressing the belief that "America's young people are a lot smarter
than we give them credit for," then-U.S. Secretary of Education Richard
W. Riley issued a challenge to the nation's high schools in February of
last year.

Offer at least one Advanced Placement course by the fall of 2001, he
said at a Washington gathering, and add one more each year for the next
10 years.

Making It Happen

May 16, 2001

Mr. Riley may have set his sights too high. This school year, only
60 percent of public high schools are offering the college-level
courses. But he was right on one point: The Advanced Placement program,
which allows students to earn college credit for mastering rigorous
coursework in high school, is on a roll.

Since 1990, the number of AP exams taken by students across the
country has grown more than two-fold, rising to 1.27 million last year,
according to the College Board, the New York City-based nonprofit group
that administers the program.

The program is looking especially good to policymakers as calls rise
at the national level for a historic shift in the mission of the
American high school.

Rather than sort college-bound students from the non-college- bound,
as they traditionally have tended to do, high schools ought to prepare
each and every student for postsecondary study, some education leaders
are suggesting. For growing numbers of high school communities, the
Advanced Placement program is being seen as a quick, reliable means to
that end.

"The AP program gives a pretty set curriculum, deeper thinking about
subject matter, and end-of-course exams," said Gene Bottoms, a senior
vice president of the Southern Regional Education Board, an
Atlanta-based group that is leading its own initiative to improve high
schools. "It gives school folks a packet of services that they greatly
need."

But some educators are also concerned that expanding the AP program
too rapidly could bring its own set of troubles. They worry that
unprepared students are being pushed into academic waters that are too
deep for them, and that the ablest students are feeling pressured to
take too many AP classes. Others fear that the courses will get watered
down to accommodate the increasingly wide range of abilities that
students bring to them.

"The Advanced Placement program uses a one-size-fits-all approach to
high school education," said William L. Lichten, a retired Yale
University physics professor who has studied the program. "What is
needed is a more diverse approach to the problems of high school
students."

Surging Ahead

When a handful of colleges and foundations developed the program in
1955, Advanced Placement was intended to offer a way to challenge a
select few college freshmen—those who were bored in typical
introductory college courses. By mastering such courses in high school,
the thinking went, those students could bypass the required
introductory classes and delve deeper into their academic studies from
their first days on campus.

From the beginning, students who have earned a 3 or better on the
5-point scale used to grade the program's end-of-course tests have been
judged by the College Board to be qualified to skip the equivalent
courses in college. If the students' chosen colleges go along with that
recommendation—and not all do—the students' savings can
translate to an average of $3,000 a course. A smaller number of
four-year institutions even allow students who have passed a sufficient
number of AP tests to enter as sophomores.

About 1,200 students took the first AP exams in 1956. But the
program really began to see steady growth in the mid-1980's, and the
pace has accelerated to some degree since then, according to Lee Jones,
the executive director of the Advanced Placement program for the
College Board. Last year, more than three-quarters of a million
students around the world took AP exams. Likewise, the number of
courses offered through the program has more than tripled, from 11 in
1955 to 35 last year.

The smaller International Baccalaureate Organization, which provides
a set program of similarly rigorous courses at 1,182 schools worldwide,
has grown at an even faster clip.

Much of the expansion of the AP program has paralleled the rise in
the percentages of students nationwide going on to postsecondary
schools. The program also got a public relations boost from a 1999
federal study suggesting that the single biggest indicator of students'
success in college was whether or not they had taken challenging
courses in high school.

As a result, college-admissions officers have begun to view AP
courses on student transcripts as something more than a free pass out
of an introductory course: They are seen as a measure of college
readiness. And college-savvy parents have been quick to catch on, often
insisting that their children enroll in such classes.

Access to AP coursework, meanwhile, became an equity issue in the
1990's, as it became clear that poorer and minority students lacked the
same access to the college-level courses enjoyed by their white and
better-off peers. Relatively few urban and rural schools with
predominantly minority enrollments, for example, had the resources to
offer AP classes at all.

And even at schools that are solidly in the AP fold, minority
students have sometimes found themselves on academic tracks that veer
away from Advanced Placement.

The College Board, for its part, has taken up the cause by preaching
the importance of educational equity and rewarding schools that
increase the numbers of minority students taking part in the
program.

"If indeed being able to participate in challenging courses in high
school is key to success in college, then every high school kid ought
to have that opportunity at their school," Mr. Jones said. "It's a
fundamental educational equity issue."

Federal and state governments have also followed suit. Federal aid
to encourage states to participate in the program nearly quintupled
from $2.7 million in 1998-99 to $15 million this fiscal year.
Twenty-six states also provide their own money to help schools cover
exam-fee payments, grants for teachers' professional development
related to AP courses, instructional materials, equipment, and other
incentives to stimulate program participation—particularly among
underserved groups.

Beyond matters of access, some leaders in current efforts to improve
high schools see the program as a model of how education systems ought
to operate.

In the AP program, teams of university and high school faculty
members work together to set common standards, to write test questions,
and even to grade the tests. This summer's "readings"—or grading
sessions—will involve 5,000 high school and university
instructors working at 10 sites around the country.

"There is a disjuncture between secondary and postsecondary
education in the United States," said Michael W. Kirst, a Stanford
University education professor who is studying K-16 school improvement
efforts. "The AP program is an inspiration for how it ought to be
done."

Performance Varies

Despite the program's growing popularity, the passing rates on AP
exams have held fairly steady over the years, according to the College
Board. About two-thirds of the students who take the tests get a score
of 3 or better.

"If we saw huge increases in the numbers of students scoring at
lower levels, it would cause us great concern," Mr. Jones said. "The
proportion of students [earning scores of 2 or lower] has grown
slightly in the time the program has experienced this great
growth."

Still, despite widespread state and local efforts to help pay
students' exam fees, only about a third of students enrolled in AP
classes actually take the tests for college credit. And even among that
more select group of students, exam readers say they typically see a
wide range of performance.

"You get some responses from kids that are very strong. I sometimes
say to myself, 'I couldn't have written that in 45 minutes, and I have
a master's degree in English,'" said Anne M. Weeks, a private school
teacher in Glencoe, Md., who has graded English composition and
literature exams for the program for five years. "Then you see
responses from kids who are writing at a 7th grade level."

Since the exams are not given until May, Ms. Weeks worries that
admissions officers will get the wrong idea about students' readiness
for college just by looking at the presence of AP courses on their
transcripts.

The last period of the day at Virginia's McLean High School finds some students dozing in an Advanced Placement history class.

—Allison Shelley

"We should be using AP courses as they were meant to be
used—as acceleration—and not as a tool for college
admissions or for ranking high schools," she said.

The wide range in the quality of students' exam work has led some
college educators to worry that AP standards are slipping. Although
more than 3,000 colleges and universities participate in the program to
some degree, the number of institutions or academic departments that
accept the recommended score of 3 as the passing threshold—rather
than 4 or 5—has been shrinking, Mr. Jones of the College Board
acknowledged.

"Colleges are inconsistent," said Donna Main, who teaches Advanced
Placement U.S. government at Wicomico High School in Wicomico, Md.
"Sometimes they don't accept AP at all. Sometimes they ask for 3 or
better, or a 4 or better. Sometimes they say, 'It's great that you're
taking AP, but we want you to take our writing course.'"

Among the schools that don't accept program coursework at all is
Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

"AP is a second-rate alternative to advanced teaching," contended
Leon Botstein, Bard's president and an outspoken critic of traditional
high schools. "It's a test-driven curriculum, and that's completely
anathema to anything a university does."

The College Board, however, insists that it is able to maintain high
standards by periodically trying out the exams on groups of college
freshmen taking comparable courses. Under a contract with the board,
the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J., handles various
technical and operations aspects of the exam program, such as the
distribution of tests to the schools, the grading of multiple- choice
sections, and the development of scoring procedures.

"We have elaborate procedures in place to ensure a 4 means a 4 means
a 4," Mr. Jones said.

But critics such as Mr. Lichten of Yale say such studies are flawed
because they put the small number of students who take AP exams up
against the much larger pool of college students in the freshman-level
courses. The comparison, Mr. Lichten said, is not quite like comparing
"apples and apples."

The criticisms coming from colleges and universities have led the
program's supporters to question the motives of the small but growing
numbers of college officials who discount the program.

With rising numbers of students showing up on campuses who are
eligible for AP credit, and thus need less college coursework, "you
have to wonder if there's a financial reason behind [such skepticism],"
Ms. Main said.

Not For Everybody

Another worry for some teachers is that the increasing emphasis on
the program is pushing students to take courses that are too difficult
for them, or course loads that are too heavy.

"It's not for everybody, honestly," said Kaye Dutrow, who teaches AP
English at Kent Island High School in Stevensville, Md. "Students of
average ability could take an AP class and benefit. Students of limited
ability would be frustrated.''

"I really believe AP classes should be for students who excel in
that particular area," she added. "Those students can just fly in those
classes."

The College Board agrees—up to a point.

"We don't want to see kids left out because they haven't been placed
on a strong academic track early on," Mr. Jones said. "On the other
hand, we want everybody to recognize if a student is jumping into
something that is not going to be profitable for them. Preparation for
that starts way back in middle school and before."

In a move to encourage schools to lay down academic grounding
earlier for a wider range of students, the College Board this school
year began offering "pre-AP'' workshops for teachers of students as
young as 5th grade. Districts can also get help through the board's new
"vertical teaming'' institutes, which are designed to help align the
content of courses that students encounter as they move up through the
grades. The institutes come on top of the board's existing training
sessions for both new and experienced AP teachers.

Among those who question the value of AP courses is Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

—Allison Shelley

The catch, critics point out, is that teachers are not required to
participate in any of the professional-development workshops to take
part in the AP program. That means the readiness of AP teachers, not
just their students, may also be a cause for concern.

"We've counted on schools to make good decisions on who should be
teaching AP, and they typically do," said Mary Alice McCullough, the
director of teaching and learning for the College Board's Middle States
regional office in Philadelphia. "One of the problems we're facing that
all of education is starting to face is that with the retirement of
teachers, there are instances where brand-new teachers are put into
classes to teach AP, and some are right out of college."

To shore up the incoming AP teaching force, the College Board is
piloting a three-credit methods course that aspiring teachers can take
as part of their preservice training.

Meanwhile, the same pressure that is funneling some unprepared
students into AP classes is also causing their more academically able
counterparts to shoulder unrealistic AP course loads.

"I've seen more cases of exhaustion this year, of kids being truly
depressed because of the load," said Ian Howell, who teaches AP
European history and U.S. government at McLean High School, a public
school in McLean, Va., that typically sends most of its graduating
class on to four-year colleges. "I don't know who's pounding it into
their heads that they have to have six, seven, and eight AP courses to
get into a good college."

Mr. Howell argues that the burden is unreasonably heavy for high
school students, because they spend much more of their time sitting in
classrooms than college students do.

"It's like trying to fit a college course load into a high school
day," he said.

But the growing pains the program is experiencing may be instructive
for any high school looking to ratchet up the academic content in its
course offerings.

Like the College Board, the Southern Regional Education Board found
it necessary to start working with middle schools as part of its long-
term campaign to create high school programs that prepare every student
for college-level study. The 11-year-old program, known as High Schools
That Work, now involves more 1,100 schools in 22 states.

"We have schools that are successfully teaching to most or all
students what a decade ago was only taught to the very best students,"
said Mr. Bottoms of the SREB, who heads that initiative. "But, yes, you
do have to start with middle school."

"Part of the reason our schools are successful is that they make
these changes incrementally," he added. "They typically phase out 20 to
25 percent of low- level courses each year. If you don't, it'll blow up
on you."

And in the larger scheme of things, said Michael Cohen, who served
as the U.S. Department of Education's assistant secretary for K-12
programs during President Clinton's second term, having the AP program
become too popular may be a good problem to face.

"Of all the things to worry about in public education today in the
high school area," Mr. Cohen said, "working kids too hard is not one of
them."

The College Board, the
company that devoloped and administers the AP Program, has devoloped a
plan to
expand access to AP courses across the nation. Also read a history of the AP
Exam, describing the exam's growth over 5 decades with tables charting
the increased participation in the AP program.

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